Gaming Guru

A Tiger in Your Tank

With the price of gas somewhere around $3/gallon, more and more people are shopping
around for the best price before filling their tanks. In fact, there are even
websites dedicated to this purpose. They track the price of gas at each gas station
and allow people to find out before they leave their house which gas stations
have the lowest prices. If your car takes 15 gallons on the average fill-up and
you save a nickel per gallon, you stand to save 75 cents on each fill-up. The
irony is that people are doing this more as the price goes up, but the amount
they are saving as percentage of the cost of the fill-up is actually decreasing.
For some reason less people care about saving 5 cents per gallon when gas is $1.25
then when it is $3.

Imagine that you need a new printer cartridge for your printer. You can go
to Store 1 that sells it for $22 or another store across the street that sells
it for $20. Which one are you going to go to? Suppose you go into the 2nd store
and some of the cartridges are marked $20 while others are marked $15? Which
one are you going to buy? We'll assume that they are identical cartridges with
identical expiration dates. I'm going to guess that that the $15 cartridges
will not last long. With more people going into the store that sells them cheaper
and each customer buying the cheaper cartridges within the store, they will
sell fast.

So, how come two casinos can offer the exact same video poker machine but with
two different paytables and yet very few people will pick which one they will
play based on the payback? Casino 1 may offer full-pay jacks or better paying
99.5% while the casino across the street is playing 8/5 jacks or better paying
97.5% and yet the same number of people are playing each.

But, it gets better. You can walk into a single casino and find one bank of
full-pay machines on one side of the aisle and short-pay machines on the other
side of the aisle. Again, each bank is getting about the same play. Why will
the person who will drive an extra mile to save 20 cents on a gallon of milk
not care at all what the payback of their video poker machine is?

The most likely possibility as far as I can tell is what I call the slot machine
effect. For years, Players have been conditioned to believe that the paytable
is immaterial. After all, this is how it has been on slots since the beginning
of time. Two slot machines sitting side by side can have different paytables
and you haven't a clue as to which is set to pay higher than the other. Three
bars may pay less on the 1st machine, but the machine may be programmed to have
them show up twice as often. There is simply no way to know. So, people assume
the same is true of a video poker machine, but this is not the case. Video Poker
machines (at least in places like Las Vegas) MUST by law have the cards show
up randomly. Each card must have exactly the same probability of showing up
as any other card. As a result, the theoretical maximum payback of the game
is determined by the paytable the machine uses.

Once you find the machine with the best theoretical maximum payback, you have
to play each hand according to the proper strategy. Again, this differs greatly
from slot machines where there are no decisions to be made. Because the cards
must be dealt randomly, nothing is predetermined. The cards you choose to keep/discard
directly impact the results of the hand. Just because video poker is played
on a computer does not mean the results are decided prior to the draw. Imagine
that you are playing the game with a real dealer and a real deck of cards. The
results will be identical in the long run.

If you play 600 hands per hour on a video poker machine at $1.25 per hand (quarter
max-coin), you'll play $750 per hour. By playing full-pay jacks or better (99.5%)
as opposed to short-pay (8/5, 97.5%), you'll save about $15. So, if you really
want to save on gas, drive the extra block to the casino with the full-pay machines.

Elliot Frome is a 2nd generation gaming author and analyst. His father, Lenny Frome was considered one of the premier authors of Video Poker books. Titles include, Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas and Winning Strategies for Video Poker, which includes the strategy tables for 61 of the country’s most popular versions of Video Poker. Check out Compu-Flyers website at www.vpheaven.com, or drop Elliot an e-mail at compuflyers@prodigy.net.

Elliot Frome Websites:

Books by Elliot Frome:

Elliot Frome is a 2nd generation gaming author and analyst. His father, Lenny Frome was considered one of the premier authors of Video Poker books. Titles include, Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas and Winning Strategies for Video Poker, which includes the strategy tables for 61 of the country’s most popular versions of Video Poker. Check out Compu-Flyers website at www.vpheaven.com, or drop Elliot an e-mail at compuflyers@prodigy.net.

Books by Elliot Frome:

Casino City is an independent directory and information service free of any gaming operator's control.
Warning: You must ensure you meet all age and other regulatory requirements before entering a
Casino or placing a wager. There are hundreds of jurisdictions in the world with Internet access and
hundreds of different games and gambling opportunities available on the Internet.
YOU are responsible for determining if it is legal for YOU to play any particular games or place any
particular wager.